Professional Study: Managers’ Attention Drop 52′ Into a Meeting

Who never complained about ineffective meetings? A new study reveals shocking facts about our meeting habits. Did you know that your attention drops after 52 minutes on average, while your meetings tend to go on for 1h19? We’ve put this infographic together to show you all the data in a nutshell.

Here are the key takeaways:

The bigger the company is, the longer its meetings last

In companies with less than 50 employees, 68% of managers attend meetings that run for over an hour. This number rises at 75% in structures with 50 to 499 employees, and goes to 82% in structures with over 500 employees.

The average time spent in meetings is 1 hour and 19 minutes. That means managers spend an average of 23.5 days a year stuck in meetings…

There is a high correlation between salary levels and time spent in meetings

If a manager attends an average of 3 meetings per week, the study reveals a tendency to spend more and more time as their responsibilities rise.

7% of managers attend more than 10 meetings a week, this number rises to 26% among managers earning over 80k$/year (versus only 2% for those with earnings under 38k$).

Meetings last longer than attention spans

52 minutes, it’s the average attention span into a meeting. But this base number varies highly depending on age. People aged 50 or more can maintain their focus for 58 minutes, while 35 year olds and younger lose their focus after 45 minutes.

With meetings lasting an average of 1 hour and 19 minutes, and an attention that, on average, doesn’t sustain over 52 minutes, managers waste an average of 27 minutes into each meeting they attend.

81% of managers do something else while in meetings

“Downtimes” in meetings have negative consequences on productivity. One manager out of 2 gets distracted by something else. 51% of managers send emails while in meetings, 10% play video games, and 2% even admit browsing dating sites!

Solid Tips for efficient meetings:

  • Shorten the time spent in meetings by 30%
  • Automate preparation
  • Ensure that every attendee receive the meeting notes and plan of action

Solid helps you prepare the meeting agenda in advance, and edit it live during the meeting to keep track of key decision points and actions to be taken next. After the meeting is done, simply click a button to send the meeting notes to all of the attendees.

Data source: Survey by Ifop (french polling company), March 2015 on 1002 french managers.